1736: Dedicated simple log structure, corner of Orange St.and Christian St.

1752: Laid cornerstone for new house of worship.

1758: Completed stone house of worship.

1784: Constructed steeple and installed bells.

1822: Remodeled interior of church.

1852: Laid cornerstone of old church on site of new houseof worship.

1854: Consecrated red brick Romanesque Revival houseof worship with twin steeples.

1903: Fire damaged interior of sanctuary.

1904-05: Re-frescoed sanctuary in present-day pattern.

First ReformedChurch (United

Church of Christ40 East Orange St., Lancaster, PA 17602

717-397-5149

www.firstreformeducc.org

–– HISTORY OF THE ARCHITECTURE ––

This publication was co-sponsored by theLancaster County Heritage Partnership

(County of Lancaster, Pennsylvania DutchConvention and Visitors Bureau, and theHistoric Preservation Trust of LancasterCounty) and the Downtown Lancaster

City Ministerium.

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Initiative, a project of the PennsylvaniaHistorical and Museum Commission in

partnership with the Pennsylvania Departmentof Community and Economic Development,

Center for Travel, Tourism and FilmPromotion; and the Department of

Conservation and Natural Resources,Pennsylvania Heritage Parks Program; and the

Center for Rural Pennsylvania.

For more information about LancasterCounty Heritage, contact:

Lancaster County Planning Commission50 North Duke Street, P.O. Box 83480

Lancaster, PA 17608-3480717-299-8333

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©2002 Lancaster County Heritage Partnership,Lancaster, Pennsylvania

First ReformedChurch (United

Church of Christ

Log house of worship, 1736-1758

German Reformed Church, 1758-1852

Ernestus Muhlenberg, to found Lancaster’sFranklin College. The Rev. Hendel is alsoremembered for baptizing the infant daugh-ter of Nicholas and Catherine Hauer inDecember 1766. Although little is knownabout the next 96 years of Barbara Hauer’slife, she reappears in Frederick,Maryland asthe grey-haired heroine of a JohnGreenleafWhittier poem about the CivilWar. Entitled

“Barbara Fritchie,” the lyrics celebrate theUnion cause and an old woman’s courage in the

face of an approaching Confederate battalion.

The decade before the Civil War was somewhatchaotic at First Reformed. Although the con-gregation was affected by the larger issuesof the day, it was also a communityentrenched in the American Germanexperience. When they called the Rev.HenryHarbaugh as their pastor in 1850,they were at the height of an internaldebate about changing worship servicesfrom German to English. French languageservices, held for occasional baptisms, haddisappeared a century earlier.

Several months before the Rev. Harbaugh began his pas-torate, the English contingent moved to the corner of EastOrange St. and North Duke St. where they built St. Paul’sReformed Church and held English-only services.Harbaugh could speak both languages, and he encouragedthose who stayed at First Church to use both languages inworship services.

Although his pastorate lasted only ten years, the Rev.Harbaugh left a significant witness with the Reformed com-munity in Lancaster. Four years after his arrival, the congre-gation moved from the old stone church into a much larger,red brick Romanesque Revival house of worship. The oldstone church’s cornerstone became the new cornerstone.The Kieffer engraved lock was moved to the new front door,where visitors may still stoop to read its message.

People of French, German, and Swiss Reformed ancestrymigrated to what would become Lancaster County at leastas early as 1700. According to a 1733 letter written byJohn Conrad Tempelmann, some settled in theAmerican Indian village they called Hickorytown andlater Lancaster. On September 8, 1732, a visiting cler-gyman baptized the child Susanna Bauman, the firstknown record of a Reformed baptism in Lancaster Town.Templemann’s letter referred to an existing Lancastercongregation and requested the services of a resident pastor.

The Rev. John JacobHock arrived at Lancaster Town some-time early in 1736, just in time to preside at the dedicationof a small log structure for the Lancaster Reformed Church.Within 20 years from the date of its official organization,First Reformed had completed a second and more substan-tial stone house of worship. The old log church was movedacross Orange St. and converted into a dwelling.

Peter Kieffer, a locksmith and member of the church,engraved the lock for the front door of the new house ofworship. Through the years, many a sexton preparing tounlock the doors may have stooped to read its comfortingwords, here translated from the German, “Now go we intothe Church / May our Lord Jesus Christ / be with us; / notalone for our time, / but for all Eternity.”

In the 1760s, First Church was home to the German Hauerfamily and the French LeRoys. One chronicler called theLeRoy sisters (four daughters of a local clockmaker) the“belles of the congregation.” Susanna married the well-known pastor, Philip William Otterbein. After serving atFirst Church, he went on to help found theUnited Brethrenin Christ denomination. Elizabeth married another FirstChurch pastor, the Rev. William Hendel. Salome marriedCharles Hall, a Philadelphia goldsmith. Anna Maria, theyoungest of the sisters, learned her father’s trade andwas saidto be “as good a clockmaker” as he was. She and her hus-band, Wilton Atkinson, took over the family business.

Elizabeth LeRoy’s pastor husband, William Hendel, part-nered with the Lutheran pastor, Rev. Gotthilf Henry

STORY OF THE PEOPLEAND NEIGHBORHOOD

Congregants were invited to keep the seat cushions fromthe old church as souvenirs, carrying them out the door afterthe farewell service.

As the Rev. Harbaugh’s years at First Church came to anend, the debates about whether to use German or Englishfor worship services continued. Resolution did not comeuntil 1870 when another group of members withdrew toform St. John’s Reformed Church. At St. John’s, located onthe northeast corner of Orange St. and Mulberry St., thecongregation worshiped in German into the early years ofthe 20th century. In the late 1970s, St. Paul’s and St. John’sreunited to form the Church of the Apostles.

Today, the Rev. Harbaugh is remembered as the author ofnumerous ReformedChurch texts and several hymns, includ-ing “Jesus, I live to thee”which, it is believed, hewrote in thepastor’s study at FirstChurch.The parsonagewhere he livedhas been transformed into a parish house, available to thecongregation and city community groups. The congrega-tion is part of the United Church of Christ, and the gener-ous and open access to its facilities symbolizes 21st century

efforts to become “A New Church, Same Place.”

Earliest Known Record:1732 baptism by visitingReformed clergyman

Current House of Worship:Romanesque Revival, completed 1854

BarbaraFritchie

Rev. HenryHarbaugh